What “Social” Can Mean For Girls

As the new school year gets underway, and the academic and social seasons begin for teenagers, we want to take a look a different meaning of being “social.” In today’s Financial Nutrition blog post, we are reprising this post from February of 2014 about the value of social entrepreneurship for girls. Social entrepreneurship helps expands minds, and engage creativity and critical thinking while helping others.

Social entrepreneurship is a fantastic way to teach girls and young women about money, management, idea generation, and creativity. The beauty of social entrepreneurship is it can be a very engaging course as students attempt to solve the world’s problems in innovative ways, with new approaches to the problems, and positive predicted outcomes. Most entrepreneurship education involves experiential learning, which is a powerful way to engage students. Social entrepreneurship education typically involves the following topics and learning outcomes:

Goal setting

Idea generation

Opportunity recognition

Mission identification

Financial analysis

Presentation skills

I did a very interesting program for the Women’s Academy for International Leadership Development at Mt. Holyoke College in the summer of 2012. The program was made up of high school girls from the U.S. and China, and with the help of some very talented Mt. Holyoke students, I taught economics and financial understanding through social entrepreneurship. The students were divided into groups, and developed model projects while also having classroom time learning entrepreneurship and finance. The social entrepreneurship projects that the students developed were extraordinary in their creativity, and potential effectiveness. The students also worked with each other very effectively, even though many had not known each other before the program. That kind of teamwork is a critical skill for all students given the demands of the modern workplace.

I have noticed in recent years more and more schools begin to take a look at introducing entrepreneurship, including social entrepreneurship, into their curricula. In particular, I have seen all-girls’ schools begin to look into this possibility, which is an interesting trend and a sign of the potential effectiveness of this type of education for girls.

Social entrepreneurship also provides some pretty amazing role models for girls and young women. We have profiled on the Financial Nutrition Facebook page some remarkable female role models in the social entrepreneurship space, including Jeroo Billimoria, whose latest initiative, Child and Finance International, is a financial inclusion program for millions of children.

Social entrepreneurship is an opportunity for girls and young women to expand their minds, and put their critical thinking skills and creativity to work to solve the world’s problems. It is an engaging method to teach about finance and economics, and is an experiential approach that makes for particularly effective learning. Social entrepreneurship is also a way for a young woman to start her very own organization, which is a fun and meaningful extracurricular or summer activity that may eventually change the world.

At Financial Nutrition, we create these programs for schools and private groups and individuals, and would be happy to talk to you more about them. Please contact us if you would like additional information on this amazing educational opportunity!